Thursday, July 14, 2005

Crying properly for the first time

THURSDAY 14 JULY 0910 BSTJohn and I were quiet, thinking of how I had got on the train with all the other people. We tuned to BBC Radio 4 at 8.50am, the time of the explosions.We listened to people's witness of how they had been on the train, rescued people from the tracks, searched for the missing and how they had not been found. We were both in tears.

THURSDAY 14 JULY 0927 BSTLast night I managed to speak to my parents. They had been teaching a painting course in Norfolk, and whilst we had been texting regularly, we had not been able to talk to each other.They talked of their shock and sadness. It had been very difficult when they had to look after course students all day and evening, giving them little time to deal with the news of their eldest child being on the bombed train.Later on, another man who had been on my carriage and found out about me from this diary managed to get in contact and we talked for a long time and agreed to meet for the silence tomorrow with some of the other victims.My friend and neighbour Jane came round and cooked us sausages and we all sat in the garden feeling shattered. After she had gone I began to cry, properly, for the first time. I couldn't stop sobbing and shaking. John held me.I wept for the poor people who had been standing behind me who had died and been injured. A hundred feet down in a narrow, dirty, smoke-choked dark tunnel, I had to leave them there, screaming and crying, dead or dying and I could not help them.I wept with despairing anger at the men who had done this, how could they hate so much? How could they think this was glorious, or just?I wept because I had been so afraid, and because I had survived, and I had walked away from the train and my fellow passengers had not.Tears are in my eyes again now. It's almost more than I can bear.I must get ready to go to Trafalgar Square to observe the silence with the other people from my train.After we will go to King's Cross to lay flowers, then to a pub where I will meet some friends. And at 6pm we will go to Trafalgar Square again for the Vigil.And I hope I and other Londoners will find some peace and resolution there, standing together.